Research Themes

Research Group

My research is focused on understanding past climate by using stalagmite proxies to reconstruct past variability and employing model experiment results to investigate system forcing and response scenarios. Her current interests include tropical Indo-Pacific rainfall variability on glacial-interglacial timescales, past climate changes of the semi-arid Near East and its effect on ancient civilizations, and the use of stalagmites to trace past volcanic activity. I work with two DTP students, Chris Theaker and Frankie Buckingham. I am also a lecturer and the acting tutor for Worcester College.

Current Research Projects:

Climatic, environmental and tectonic influences on prehistoric human development in Iran

Currently, there is little paleoclimate proxy data in Western Asia to extend climate records beyond the limits of the instrumental period, leaving scant evidence to investigate the system’s response to various climate forcings on different timescales. Cave speleothems have proven to be remarkable climate recorders in semi-arid regions. Decorated caves span a large portion of the arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, providing an opportunity to investigate speleothems as potential Iranian climate recorders. This work aims to provide a precise chronology of climatic change in east and west Iran during the late Quaternary and provide a framework to inform climate models, landscape evolution, and societal/archaeological studies.

Rainwater and drip water isotope monitoring in Iran

Oxford University John Fell Fund, £7500 (2015-2018)
Geological Society of London Research Grant, £1009 (2015)

The objective of this project is to determine the large-scale mechanisms responsible for the isotopic variations of rainfall in Iran. Combined with studying the transformation of rainfall to cave drip water isotopic values, this project will unlock the relationship between oxygen isotopes measured in cave stalagmites and large-scale climate, thus setting the stage for hundreds of thousands of years of climate data to be extracted from our Iranian stalagmite collection. This work aims to initiate a multi-year rainwater and dripwater collection program at 3 locations in Iran: Tehran, Mashhad, and Kerman

Until recently, estimates of past volcanic sulfur emissions have been limited to paleovolcanic ice core records and/or eruption deposit petrology. However, stalagmite studies are now beginning to use synchrotron measurements to investigate past volcanic ash and atmospheric sulfur injections. Here I aim to use the UK Diamond Light Source to analyze S and other larger elements on Borneo stalagmites, particularly one with ages that flank the famous Toba super eruption, for which the climatic impact is greatly contested. If successful, these results would demonstrate the potential of Borneo stalagmites to eventually be used to quantify the amount of sulfur gas injected into the stratosphere by historic eruptions plus the Toba super eruption. Collaborators are also working to use SIMS scans to reconstruct an ultra-high resolution stable isotope record of the Borneo stalagmite Toba excursion first identified in Carolin et al., 2013.

Rainwater isotope and climate history of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool over the last glacial period

Royal Society international collaboration scheme (£5700)
Royal Geographical Society field grant (£500)
Geological Society of London research grant (£1350)

The objective of this project is to better constrain the rainwater isotope and climate history of the tropical Indo-Pacific from the last glacial period through the present. This project will also investigate how the region’s atmospheric dynamics impact rainwater isotopes and climate elsewhere around the globe during this period. We aim to execute multiple isotope-enabled atmospheric-slab ocean model experiments targeting the tropical Indo-Pacific to analyze model simulation / proxy record synthesis comparisons. Notably, the limited availability of stalagmite records across the region still restricts our ability to pinpoint specific climate mechanisms responsible for the evident variability recorded at a single site. Here we also aim to locate and establish new karst field sites from west Malaysia across Borneo. This project will include the establishment of additional cave dripwater isotopic variability monitoring sites throughout the region, construction of stalagmite oxygen isotope records from the newly established field sites, and analysis of available oxygen isotope records in the region in an isotope-enabled model-data comparison study.